Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927) was an American leader of the woman’s suffrage movement.

In 1872, Woodhull was the first female to run for President of the United States. An activist for women’s rights and labor reforms, Woodhull was also an advocate of free love, by which she meant the freedom to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference.[1]

Woodhull went from rags to riches twice, her first fortune being made on the road as a highly successful magnetic healer[2] before she joined the spiritualist movement in the 1870s.[3] While authorship of many of her articles is disputed (many of her speeches on these topics were collaborations between Woodhull, her backers, and her second husband, Colonel James Blood[4]), her role as a representative of these movements was powerful. Together with her sister, she was the first woman to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and they were among the first women to found a newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, which began publication in 1870.[5]

At her peak of political activity in the early 1870s, Woodhull is best known as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency, which she ran for in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women’s suffrage and equal rights. Her arrest on obscenity charges a few days before the election for publishing an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton added to the sensational coverage of her candidacy. She did not receive any electoral votes, and there is conflicting evidence about popular votes.[citation needed]

She was born Victoria California Claflin, the seventh of ten children (six of whom survived to maturity),[6] in the rural frontier town of Homer, Licking County, Ohio. Her mother, Roxanna “Roxy”[6] Hummel Claflin, was illiterate and was illegitimate.[7] She had become a follower of the Austrian mystic Franz Mesmer and the new spiritualist movement.[citation needed] Her father, Reuben “Old Buck”[6] Buckman Claflin,[8][9] was a con man andsnake oil salesman.[6] He came from an impoverished branch of the Massachusetts-based Scots-American Claflin family, semi-distant cousins to Governor William Claflin.[9] Victoria became close to her sister, Tennessee Celeste Claflin (called Tennie), seven years her junior and the last child born to the family. As adults they collaborated in founding a stock brokerage and newspaper in New York City.[6] When only seven she was accused of burning down a cupola. She was beaten, starved and sexually abused by her father when still very young. Victoria believed in spiritualism – she referred to Banquo’s Ghost from Shakespeare’s Macbeth – because it gave her belief in a better life. She was guided in 1868 by Demosthenes as a guide to what symbolism would be her theories of Free Love.[10]

By age 11, Woodhull had only three years of formal education, but her teachers found her to be extremely intelligent. She was forced to leave school and home with her family when her father, after having “insured it heavily,”[2] burned the family’s rotting gristmill. When he tried to get compensated by insurance, his arson and fraud were discovered; he was run off by a group of town vigilantes.[2] The town held a “benefit” to raise funds to pay for the rest of the family’s departure from Ohio.[2]

When she was 14, Victoria met 28-year-old Canning Woodhull (listed as “Channing” in some records), a doctor from a town outside Rochester, New York. Her family had consulted him to treat the girl for a chronic illness. Woodhull practiced medicine in Ohio at a time when the state did not require formal medical education and licensing. By some accounts, Woodhull claimed to be the nephew of Caleb Smith Woodhull, mayor of New York Cityfrom 1849 to 1851; in fact he was a distant cousin.

They were married on November 20, 1853.[11][12] Their marriage certificate was recorded in Cleveland on November 23, 1853, when Victoria was two months past her 15th birthday.[2][13] She soon learned that her new husband was an alcoholic and a womanizer. She often had to work outside the home to support the family. She and Canning had two children, Byron and Zulu (later Zula) Maude.[14] According to one account,[which?] Byron was born with an intellectual disability in 1854, a condition Victoria believed was caused by her husband’s alcoholism. Another version recounted how his disability was caused by a fall from a window. Victoria divorced her husband after having the two children and kept his surname.[3]

Woodhull’s support of free love probably originated as she discovered the infidelity of her first husband. Women who married in the United States during the 19th century were bound into the unions, even if loveless, with few options to escape. Divorce, where possible, was scandalous, and women who divorced were stigmatized and often ostracized by society. Victoria Woodhull concluded women should have the choice to leave unbearable marriages. She railed against the hypocrisy of society’s tolerating married men who had mistresses and engaged in other sexual dalliances. In 1872, Woodhull publicly criticized well-known clergyman Henry Ward Beecher for adultery. Beecher had an affair with his parishioner, Elizabeth Tilton, who later confessed to the affair.[16] Woodhull sent the accounts of the affair through the federal mails, landing her in jail.[17] Woodhull believed in monogamous relationships, although she did state she had the right also to change her mind: the choice to make love or not was in every case the woman’s choice (since this would place her in an equal status to the man, who had the capacity to rape and physically overcome a woman, whereas a woman did not have that capacity with respect to a man).[18] Woodhull said:

To woman, by nature, belongs the right of sexual determination. When the instinct is aroused in her, then and then only should commerce follow. When woman rises from sexual slavery to sexual freedom, into the ownership and control of her sexual organs, and man is obliged to respect this freedom, then will this instinct become pure and holy; then will woman be raised from the iniquity and morbidness in which she now wallows for existence, and the intensity and glory of her creative functions be increased a hundred-fold . . .[19]

In her same (at the time, infamous) “Steinway speech,” delivered on Monday, November 20, 1871 in Steinway Hall, New York City, Woodhull also stated her opinion on free love quite clearly: “Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.”[20]

She had arrived in Harlem by railroad via 4th Avenue with Tennessee Claflin, into a burgeoning city of exploding population and gangsterism on Stoop Hill. On the streets the open sewers competed with horse manure for the stench. The rich intermingled with poor on Broadway in Manhattan; prostitutes rubbing shoulders with the ‘haves’ that included in their number the richest American citizen, Commodore Vanderbilt, railroad proprietor and millionaire.

Victoria took laudanum while visiting the brothels on 5th Avenue. She lived on Great Jones Street. Most of the 20,000 prostitutes in New York lived on Green Street. She circulated, managing to pick up an income of $20,000 from her liaisons with Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt proposed marriage to Tennessee, but his family was utterly opposed to it.[21] Allegedly, these rumors originated in articles published by the Chicago Mail, but no such articles have been found.[21] She spoke out in person against prostitution, and even considered marriage for material gain a form of it, yet her journal, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, voiced support for the legalization of sex work.[21] A personal account from one of Colonel Blood’s friends suggests that Woodhull’s sister Tennie was held against her will in a brothel until Woodhull rescued her; but this story remains unconfirmed.[21]

Woodhull, with sister Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin, became the first women stockbrokers and in 1870 they opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street. Woodhull, Claflin & Company opened in 1870, with the assistance of the wealthyCornelius Vanderbilt, an admirer of Woodhull’s skills as a medium; he is rumoured to have been her sister Tennie’s lover, and to have seriously considered marrying her.[22] Woodhull made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange by advising clients like Vanderbilt. On one occasion she told him to sell his shares short for 150 cents per stock, which he duly followed, and earned millions on the deal. Newspapers such as the New York Heraldhailed Woodhull and Claflin as “the Queens of Finance” and “the Bewitching Brokers.”[23] Many contemporary men’s journals (e.g., The Days’ Doings) published sexualized images of the pair running their firm (although they did not participate in the day-to-day business of the firm),linking the concept of publicly minded, un-chaperoned women with ideas of “sexual immorality” and prostitution.[24]

On the date of May 14, 1870, Woodhull and Claflin used the money they had made from their brokerage to found a newspaper, the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. Its primary purpose was to support Victoria Claflin Woodhull for President of the United States. Published for the next six years, feminism was the Weekly’s primary interest, but it became notorious for publishing controversial opinions on taboo topics, advocating among other things sex education, free love, women’s suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and licensed prostitution. History often states the paper advocated birth control, but some historians disagree. The paper is now known for printing the first English version of Karl Marx‘s Communist Manifesto in its December 30, 1871 edition, and the paper argued the cause of labor with eloquence and skill. James Blood and Stephen Pearl Andrews wrote the majority of the articles, as well as other able contributors.[24]

In 1872, the Weekly published a story that set off a national scandal and preoccupied the public for months. Henry Ward Beecher, a renowned preacher of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church, had condemned Woodhull’s free love philosophy in his sermons. But a member of his church, Theodore Tilton, disclosed to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a colleague of Woodhull, that his wife had confessed Beecher was committing adultery with her. Provoked by such hypocrisy, Woodhull decided to expose Beecher. He ended up standing trial in 1875, for adultery in a proceeding that proved to be one of the most sensational legal episodes of the era, gripping the attention of hundreds of thousands of Americans: the trial ended with a hung jury; but the church won the case hands down.[25]

George Francis Train once defended her. Other feminists of her time, including Susan B. Anthony, disagreed with her tactics in pushing for women’s equality. Some characterized her as opportunistic and unpredictable; in one notable incident, she had a run-in with Anthony during a meeting of the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA). (The radical NWSA later merged with the conservative American Women’s Suffrage Association [AWSA] to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.)

Woodhull learned how to infiltrate the all-male domain of national politics and arranged to testify on women’s suffrage before the House Judiciary Committee.[15] Woodhull argued that women already had the right to vote — all they had to do was use it — since the14th and 15th Amendments guaranteed the protection of that right for all citizens.[26] The simple but powerful logic of her argument impressed some committee members. Learning of Woodhull’s planned address, suffrage leaders postponed the opening of the 1871National Woman Suffrage Association‘s third annual convention in Washington in order to attend the committee hearing. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Isabella Beecher Hooker, saw Woodhull as the newest champion of their cause. They applauded her statement: “[W]omen are the equals of men before the law, and are equal in all their rights.”[26]

With the power of her first public appearance as a woman’s rights advocate, Woodhull moved to the leadership circle of the suffrage movement. Although her Constitutional argument was not original, she focused unprecedented public attention on suffrage. Woodhull was the first woman ever to petition Congress in person. Numerous newspapers reported her appearance before Congress. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper printed a full-page engraving of Woodhull, surrounded by prominent suffragists, delivering her argument.[15][27]

Woodhull joined the International Workingmen’s Association, also known as the First International. She supported its goals by articles in her newspaper. In the United States, many Yankee radicals, former abolitionists and other progressive activists, became involved in the organization, which had been founded in England. German-American and ethnic Irish nearly lost control of the organization, and feared its goals were going to be lost in the broad-based, democratic egalitarianism promoted by the Americans. In 1871, the Germans expelled most of the English-speaking members of the First International’s U.S. sections, leading to the quick decline of the organization, as it failed to attract the ethnic working class in America.[28] Karl Marx commented disparagingly on Woodhull in 1872, and expressed approval of the expulsions.[29]

Woodhull announced her candidacy for President by writing a letter to the editor of the New York Herald on April 2, 1870.[30]

Woodhull was nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal Rights Party on May 10, 1872, at Apollo Hall, New York City. A year earlier, she had announced her intention to run. Also in 1871, she spoke publicly against the government being composed only of men; she proposed developing a new constitution and a new government a year thence.[31] Her nomination was ratified at the convention on June 6, 1872. They nominated the former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass for Vice President. He did not attend the convention and never acknowledged the nomination. He served as a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College for the State of New York. This made her the first woman candidate.

While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for President of the United States, some have questioned that priority given issues with the legality of her run. They disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35. However, election coverage by contemporary newspapers does not suggest age was a significant issue. The presidential inauguration was in March 1873. Woodhull’s 35th birthday was in September 1873.

Woodhull’s campaign was also notable for the nomination of Frederick Douglass, although he did not take part in it. His nomination stirred up controversy about the mixing of whites and blacks in public life and fears ofmiscegenation (especially as he had married a much younger white woman after his first wife died). The Equal Rights Party hoped to use the nominations to reunite suffragists with African-American civil rights activists, as the exclusion of female suffrage from the Fifteenth Amendment two years earlier had caused a substantial rift between the groups.

Having been vilified in the media for her support of free love, Woodhull devoted an issue of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly (November 2, 1872) to an alleged adulterous affair between Elizabeth Tilton and Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, a prominent Protestant minister in New York (he supported female suffrage but had lectured against free love in his sermons). Woodhull published the article to highlight what she saw as a sexual double-standard between men and women.

That same day, a few days before the presidential election, U.S. Federal Marshals arrested Woodhull, her second husband Colonel James Blood, and her sister Tennie C. Claflin on charges of “publishing an obscene newspaper” because of the content of this issue.[32] The sisters were held in the Ludlow Street Jail for the next month, a place normally reserved for civil offenses, but which contained more hardened criminals as well. The arrest was arranged by Anthony Comstock, the self-appointed moral defender of the nation at the time. Opponents raised questions about censorship and government persecution. The three were acquitted on a technicality six months later, but the arrest prevented Woodhull from attempting to vote during the 1872 presidential election. With the publication of the scandal, Theodore Tilton, the husband of Elizabeth, sued Beecher for “alienation of affection.” The trial in 1875 was sensationalized across the nation, and eventually resulted in a hung jury.[25]

Woodhull again tried to gain nominations for the presidency in 1884 and 1892. Newspapers reported that her 1892 attempt culminated in her nomination by the “National Woman Suffragists’ Nominating Convention” on 21 September. Mary L. Stowe of California was nominated as the candidate for vice president. The convention was held at Willard’s Hotel in Boonville, New York, and Anna M. Parker was its president. Some woman’s suffrage organizations repudiated the nominations, however, claiming that the nominating committee was unauthorized. Woodhull was quoted as saying that she was “destined” by “prophecy” to be elected president of the United States in the upcoming election.

In October 1876, Woodhull divorced her second husband, Colonel Blood. Less than a year later, exhausted and possibly depressed, she left to start a new life. When Commodore Vanderbilt died, his son William Henry Vanderbilt gave Victoria and Tennessee a large sum of money to leave the country and set up in England.

She made her first public appearance as a lecturer at St. James’s Hall in London on December 4, 1877. Her lecture was called The Human Body, the Temple of God, a lecture which she had previously presented in the United States. Present at one of her lectures was the banker John Biddulph Martin. They began to see each other and married on October 31, 1883. His family disapproved of the union, but eventually gave in.

From then on, she was known as Victoria Woodhull Martin. Under that name, she published the magazine, The Humanitarian, from 1892 to 1901, with help from her daughter Zula Woodhull. After her husband died in 1901, Martin gave up publishing and retired to the country, establishing residence at Bredon’s Norton.

Her opposition to abortion is frequently cited by opponents of abortion when writing about first wave feminism. The most common Woodhull quotations cited by opponents of abortion are:

“the rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus”[33][34]

“Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth.[35]

One of her articles on abortion not often cited by opponents of abortion is from the September 23, 1871 issue of the Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. She wrote:

Abortion is only a symptom of a more deep-seated disorder of the social state. It cannot be put down by law…. Is there, then, no remedy for all this bad state of things? None, I solemnly believe; none, by means of repression and law. I believe there is no other remedy possible but freedom in the social sphere.

Woodhull also promoted eugenics which was popular in the early 20th century prior to World War II. Her interest in eugenics might have been motivated by the profound intellectual impairment of her son. She advocated, among other things, sex education, “marrying well,” and pre-natal care as a way to bear healthier children and to prevent mental and physical disease. Her writings demonstrate views closer to those of the anarchist eugenists, rather than the coercive eugenists like Sir Francis Galton. In 2006, publisher Michael W. Perry claimed in his book “Lady Eugenist” that Woodhull supported the forcible sterilization of those she considered unfit to breed. He based his claim on a New York Times article from 1927 in which she concurred with the ruling of the case Buck v. Bell. Whether the article accurately stated her views or not, it stands in stark contrast to her earlier works in which she advocated social freedom and opposed government interference in matters of love and marriage. Woodhull-Martin, died on June 10, 1927, at Norton Park in Bredon’s Norton, Worcestershire.[36]

Riddle, A.G. (1871). The Right of women to exercise the elective franchise under the Fourteenth Article of the Constitution: speech of A.G. Riddle in the Suffrage Convention at Washington, January 11, 1871: the argument was made in support of the Woodhull memorial, before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, and reproduced in the Convention. Washington.

Woodhull, Victoria C. (2005) [1874]. Free Lover: Sex, Marriage and Eugenics in the Early Speeches of Victoria Woodhull. Seattle.ISBN1-58742-050-3.. Four of her most important early and radical speeches on sexuality as facsimiles of the original published versions. Includes: “The Principle of Social Freedom” (1872), “The Scare-crows of Sexual Slavery” (1873), “The Elixir of Life” (1873), and “Tried as by Fire” (1873–74).

Woodhull, Victoria C. (2005) [1893]. Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull. Seattle. ISBN1-58742-040-6.. Seven of her most important speeches and writings on eugenics. Five are facsimiles of the original, published versions. Includes: “Children—Their Rights and Privileges” (1871), “The Garden of Eden” (1875, publ. 1890), “Stirpiculture” (1888), “Humanitarian Government” (1890), “The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit” (1891), and “The Scientific Propagation of the Human Race” (1893)

Woodhull, Victoria C. (1870). Constitutional equality the logical result of the XIV and XV Amendments, which not only declare who are citizens, but also define their rights, one of which is the right to vote without regard to sex. New York.

Woodhull, Victoria C. (1871). The Origin, Tendencies and Principles of Government, or, A Review of the Rise and Fall of Nations from Early Historic Time to the Present. New York: Woodhull, Claflin & Company.

Woodhull, Victoria C. (1871). Speech of Victoria C. Woodhull on the great political issue of constitutional equality, delivered in Lincoln Hall, Washington, Cooper Institute, New York Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Academy of Music, Philadelphia, Opera House, Syracuse: together with her secession speech delivered at Apollo Hall.

Woodhull, Victoria C. Martin (1891). The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit. New York.